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Alright, time for some comedy with our science today. This clip from The Daily Show shows clips from a climate change protest in New York City, but what is most interesting is footage from last week of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology’s meeting with Presidential Science Advisor John Holdren. It is very hard to believe that some of the representatives on this SCIENCE committee have little to no scientific background or knowledge, and do not believe in climate change. The questions they asked to John Holdren sound ridiculous for anyone that knows something about how science works, and it is heartening to hear Holdren say that the committee should trust evidence published in scientific papers instead of what some members of the public believe. Watch the clip for some good laughs, and maybe some insight on why the U.S. isn’t able to move faster to combat climate change due to our dysfunctional government.

I'm a plant biology PhD student studying monarch butterflies in Michigan, but I'm interested in lots of other types of science, too.
I am interested in how breeding monarch butterflies choose their habitat based on floral species richness and abundance. Few studies have been conducted on optimal foraging theory when it involves an organism searching for two different kinds of resources, and butterflies are an ideal study system to investigate this, since many species are ovipositing specialists and only lay eggs on one species of hostplant, but are feeding generalists and nectar from a broad variety of flowering forbs.